The Final Odyssey, the fantastical journey of a cat boy

"Miss Aqua, have you rescued anyone else?"

Just as Fish and Alicia were catching their breath, several dim lights lit up inside the shop. Then, a rich aroma quickly spread throughout the enclosed space.

"Is this... a scented candle shop?" With the fragrant candlelight, Fish looked around at the candles on the shelves, which were designed in different shapes and styles. He had seen this kind of luxury item many times before, back in the bars in Oasis Harbor.

In fact, many wealthy female customers like to order a whole circle of this stuff in the private room to add a touch of romance when kittens like Fish are "begging for their attention".

However, even with considerable prior experience, Fish was still somewhat surprised by the variety and exquisite quality of the goods in this old-fashioned scented candle shop: the candles here included both standard shapes and those carved into numbers, geometric shapes, plants, animals, utensils, and even human figures.

Scented candles, which are disposable items, are not only meticulously crafted, but many are even carefully colored, making them look like exquisite sculptures made by master sculptors.

Among them, the largest scented candle was displayed in the center of the store. It depicted a handsome man in a wide toga robe, holding a dagger behind his back. Because it was almost exactly the same size as an average person, this candle looked more like a statue taken from a wax museum. A name was inscribed on its ceramic base…

"Greetings, you two," the girl who had saved him earlier patted his shoulder as Fish stared absently at the base of the large scented candle. "I'm sorry, the situation was urgent earlier, and I didn't have time to introduce myself. My name is Aqua, and I'm... well, you could say I'm the leader here. And you are...?"

"I'm Karin, and this is Alicia." Considering that the name "Fish" didn't seem like something a girl should use, Fish chose to continue using the pseudonym she was assigned in the previous level to avoid making others feel strange. "Thank you for helping me earlier."

"You're welcome. In these abnormal circumstances, we should all help each other. Unity is strength," Aqua said. She was a petite girl, about 1.4 meters tall, with short, blue hair that reached her ears, and wearing a maid outfit commonly seen in Akihabara maid cafes in the past. Beside her were a dozen or so girls who looked to be about her age.

Among these girls, some were wearing white dresses, some were wearing maid outfits and sportswear, and a few had bloodstains on their clothes—though they were clearly not their own.

"How much do you know about the current situation, Miss Aqua?" Fish asked. Although he knew exactly what the "game" was all about, he still intended to find out more about her by asking questions.

"Well... I woke up next to the toilet in the restroom behind this scented candle shop," Aqua shrugged. "I had only been awake for two minutes when I heard a bell ringing... so I decided to go out and see what was going on."

"And then? You rescued these girls and brought them here?"

"Yes, I met most of them on the third floor. I thought it was very dangerous to act alone in such a dark place, so I gathered them together," Aqua nodded. "At least, this shop is relatively sturdy and has enough lighting supplies, making it a convenient place to hold out temporarily."

"That's true," Fish glanced at the shelves overflowing with various scented candles. "So, Miss Aqua, how much do you remember about your...past? Do you remember who you are?"

"This..." A look of embarrassment appeared on Aqua's doll-like, delicate face. "Uh... I can't remember anything except my name. In fact, I have no memory of waking up in the bathroom."

"Yes, me too."

"I only remember waking up sitting on the toilet..."

"Um, I woke up in the barbershop chair!"

"I only remember lying on a bed in a beauty salon, but I don't remember how I got there."

The girls present echoed in agreement, and after hearing these words, Fish nodded—it seemed that the NPCs in this "game scene" had not even been imprinted with the false memories of the high school girls from their previous school; at most, they only had some basic common sense and life skills.

"Does anyone here know how to use weapons?" Fish continued to ask.

Everyone shook their heads—including Aqua. "Um...does archery count?" a silver-haired maid-dressed girl asked. "I...know a little."

"Do you have a bow and arrow?" Fish asked excitedly. After all, Frostleaf had mentioned in a casual conversation that she had practiced shooting birds with a bow and arrow and a slingshot for food when she was training as a martial artist in the forest. Therefore, even if he himself was not very good at archery, with the muscle memory of this body, as long as he had a usable bow, it should not be a big problem to deal with the black shadow in the air earlier.

"Ah...uh..." The silver-haired girl suddenly hesitated. After a long while, she took out a...toy bow made of red plastic, and several arrows with plastic suction cups as arrowheads.

"What's the use of this?!" Alicia sighed from the side.

"Actually, I had already roughly surveyed this shopping mall while I was looking for everyone," Yakia said. "Besides most of the lighting being out of order, there are a few other problems: there are no weapons, not even kitchen knives or steak knives in the kitchenware store. In addition, there are no portable lighting tools such as flashlights, and there is not even any food. The supermarket's food section is empty, with only a small amount of candy."

"And they're plum candies and lime-flavored hard candies," a girl in a white dress said, taking out a paper bag and dumping a bunch of candies wrapped in bluish-purple candy wrappers—candies that made your teeth ache just by looking at them—on the table where scented candles were lit. "I hate plum candies the most."

"But the water supply is not a problem," Yakia said. "Most people probably wake up in places like the bathroom, which are very dilapidated, but there is running water in the taps—and people who have drunk it say they have no discomfort."

"In that case, the designers of the 'game' probably don't want us to hide for long or choose to continue confronting the monsters," Fish muttered. "In this situation, we strongly recommend this book to you: *The Final Odyssey: The Fantastic Adventures of a Cat Boy*, available here. We probably need to resolve this issue as soon as possible. No more than 12 hours."

"What did you just say? What does 'game' mean?" Aqua raised one of his blue eyebrows.

"N-nothing..." Fish quickly waved his hand, "That...it was just a metaphor."

"Okay, but there shouldn't be many monsters here—but the problem is, they're all tough to deal with," Aqua continued. "When I went out to rescue the others, I roughly confirmed that there are actually only three monsters that have been active."

“One of them should be the giant black bear we encountered on the second floor,” Fish nodded. “So far, it has killed at least one person. And I think its ‘battle record’ is probably much higher. The remaining two…”

"They are two giant bats that live under the mall's roof. They are incredibly strong and can snatch up smaller people—as you just witnessed. And even larger targets can be harmed with their sharp teeth and claws," Aqua said.

"What do you think of them?" Alicia asked.

"These guys are definitely not normal wild animals. After all, black bears in their natural environment can never grow to the size of polar bears. And those bats are even bigger than the largest flying foxes; I think their wingspan is at least two meters, comparable to many large pterosaurs..."

"Besides, flying foxes aren't predatory animals," the silver-haired girl who had previously brought out the plastic toy bow and arrow added. "Their main food should be leaves and fruits."

This discussion, unsurprisingly, sparked another round of chatter among the girls inside—but only Fish knew the truth: without a doubt, the giant bear that had ripped half the head off the girl in the sportswear in the clothing and shoe supermarket on the second floor, and the giant bat hanging upside down from the mall ceiling, ready to launch a surprise attack at any moment, were both "synthetic beasts" from the old civilization era, created using genetic engineering.

Huang Yan once told Fish that the bloodthirsty spectators of the old civilization era loved to create bizarre and strange chimeras, making them fight each other or use them to fight against the new human gladiators for amusement. However, unlike those chimeras that had degenerated into pure beasts, these creatures were parasitized by "Tai Sui," which greatly enhanced their vitality and combat abilities, and also allowed them to purposefully and systematically hunt down NPCs and players in the mall.

It's quite a troublesome thing that wild animals have brains!

"So, given the current situation, what weapons do we have left?" Fish asked. "Even if we can't find knives and guns, isn't there anything else?"

"Someone tried making a self-defense knife from shards of glass and ceramic, but it probably wouldn't work against something that big," a red-haired girl in a bikini and apron said, walking up to the candle shop counter with scented candles. She pointed to a pile of items on display, including several processed glass daggers. "We collected four large pairs of scissors and a claw hammer in the shop. They should be able to be used against people, but..."

"Tsk..." Fish felt a headache coming on when he thought of the giant black bear's long, powerful forelimbs and sharp, blade-like claws. "What else?"

"Isn't this completely useless?" Alicia shook her head.

“Not entirely,” Fish said. “Glass bottles… do have some use, though not necessarily as melee weapons.”

"Well?"

“We can make Molotov cocktails. After all, those monsters are just animals. No matter how ferocious they are, they will be afraid of the heat and light of flames,” Fish bit his lip. “More importantly, they seem to be very well adapted to the dark. In this case, even if the Molotov cocktails can't kill them, the flames they create will have a great effect on scaring them. And it can create an opportunity for us to take them down.”

"But... do you know how to make a Molotov cocktail?" Alicia asked. As a high school girl (pseudo) living in a peaceful environment, she knew almost nothing about this kind of knowledge.

"Easy. Since we already have glass bottles, all we need is fabric and flammable material—not something like scented candles, of course, liquid fuel would be best—to make Molotov cocktails," Fish, who had genuine combat experience, explained. "Since you can light candles, there should be plenty of lighters here, right?"

"Oh, sorry, no," the silver-haired maid from before said, pulling out a large box of matches. "We only have these red phosphorus matches here. The only other combustible material we have is solid scented candles."

“Troublesome,” Fish shook his head—he had been hoping to collect fuel from a lighter, but that seemed unrealistic now. “If we don’t even have Molotov cocktails, our only option is to attach glass and ceramic blades to long-handled tools to make spears…but that’ll only provide a meager defense. Without decent weapons, we’re the hunted here, not the hunters.”

"Not necessarily," Aqua suddenly said. "I know a few ways."

"Speak."

"If liquid fuel is fine, then high-proof liquor might also work, like... uh... 80-proof vodka," Aqua scratched his head. "If I remember correctly, there's a high-end liquor distributor on the third floor; they might have this kind of potent stuff there."

"It's theoretically feasible," Fish nodded. "Why didn't you take some before?"

"Because I don't drink..." Aqua said, "and I never even thought of using spirits as a Molotov cocktail. If you hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have remembered it at all."

"It's alright, it's enough that I remembered it now," Fish said, picking up the cloth the other had prepared and attaching the polished glass blade to a mop handle to make a makeshift spear that could be used for stabbing but wasn't very sturdy. "Where's that liquor store?"

"At the other end of this mall," Aqua said, "it's... a little far from us."